The exchequer, so as not to convert them into beggars and vagabonds, avoids expropriation, selling out their concrete hovel, vegetable garden, and small field of potatoes or cabbages; it gives them receipts gratis, or, at least, refrains from prosecuting them.[4212] In this way the poor peasant, although a land-owner, again exempts himself, or is exempted from his local indebtedness.

In truth, he pays nothing, or nearly nothing, otherwise than by prestations (payments) in money or in kind; that is to say, by three days' work on the district roads, which, if he pays in kind, are not worth more than 50 sous.[4213] Add to this his portion, very small and often null, of the additional centimes on the tax on doors and windows, on the personal tax, and on the tax on real estate, in all 4 or 5 francs a year.

Such is the amount by which the poor or half-poor taxpayer in the villages liberates himself toward his department and commune .-- In the towns, he apparently pays more, owing to the octroi.
But, at first, there are only 1525 communes out of 36,000 in which the octroi[4214] has been established; while in the beginning, under the Directory and Consulate, it was revived only on his account, for his benefit, in behalf of public charity, to defray the expenses of asylums and hospitals ruined by revolutionary confiscation.

It was then "an octroi for charity," in fact as well as in name, like the surplus tax on theater seats and tickets, established at the same time and for the same purpose; it still to-day preserves the stamp of its first institution.
Bread, the indispensable provision for the poor, is not subjected to the octroi nor the materials for making it, either grain or flour, nor milk, fruits, vegetables, or codfish, while there is only a light tax on butcher's meat.

Even on beverages, where the octroi is heavier, it remains, like all indirect taxes, nearly proportional and semi-optional.
In effect, it is simply an increase of the tax on beverages, so many additional centimes per franc on the sum of indirect taxation, as warrantable as the impost itself, as tolerable, and for the same motives.[4215] For the greater the sobriety of the taxpayer, the less is he affected by this tax.